Hurrah! I'm over the flu at last. It's meant rather a slow start to the year, but I'm cracking on now and I know that Margaret and Sophie are too.We are deep in reading and writing reports for the Novel Prize, and are once again amazed at the variety of subject matter and the high standard of writing. The long list will be posted in mid-February and we are hoping to send out the reports then too. There may be a short delay though, as we have had more requests for reports this year. We'll do our best.After a lot of deliberation, we have decided to move the closing date for our short story competitions until later in the year. There is, however, the other Exeter short story competition that is often muddled with ours. It's an excellent competition with good prize money, run by Exeter Writers, one of the oldest writing groups in the country. Their competition closes on 28th February and all the information about entry etc isHERE